I have been waiting and waiting for the RB-1200's to come back but I have heard nothing of when that will be, that is want I really wanted.

 

So plan B was to buy another PCI card to support more drives in my current server. Right now I have no onboard SATA and only a 10/100 LAN, I have a 4 Port SATA PCI card, the server is full of drive and out of space.

 

Well then I was thinking that instead of spending $60 on another PCI card maybe I would be better off sticking that money in a new mother board and CPU, seems to make more sence.

 

So if you had to buy right now what mother board would you buy that would be available. I want atleast 6 onboard SATA and though maybe a dual LAN would be useful if UnRaid will support it. Better yet one that will support my old socket 478 CPU !!

I have been waiting and waiting for the RB-1200's to come back but I have heard nothing of when that will be, that is want I really wanted.

 

So plan B was to buy another PCI card to support more drives in my current server. Right now I have no onboard SATA and only a 10/100 LAN, I have a 4 Port SATA PCI card, the server is full of drive and out of space.

 

Well then I was thinking that instead of spending $60 on another PCI card maybe I would be better off sticking that money in a new mother board and CPU, seems to make more sence.

 

So if you had to buy right now what mother board would you buy that would be available. I want atleast 6 onboard SATA and though maybe a dual LAN would be useful if UnRaid will support it. Better yet one that will support my old socket 478 CPU !!

 

Good luck finding a "good" board that will support the 478 CPU.

 

I have just switched to using this motherboard. It has 4 PCI-e x1 slots for expansion via the PCI-e bus.  It also has 6 onboard SATA ports.

 

Right now I have 2 PCI-e x1 cards in 2 of the slots.  The next card I get will be this one or this one.  The first supports 4 SATA disks on the PCI-e x1 slot while the second supports 6 SATA disks on the PCI-e x1 slot.

How many drive slots do you need?  If you need a lot (more than 14), then prostuff's suggested board looks good (though be wary of the HPA issue, since it is a Gigabyte board).  If you only need support for 6-14 drives, then my favorite board du jour is the Biostar A760G M2+.  It is well vetted and well liked - I am using one, as are several others on these forums.  It has 6 onboard SATA slots, and if you need more than that, you can throw in a Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 with appropriate breakout cables to bring your capacity up to 14 drives.  The expansion cards that prostuff linked should work in this mobo as well.  I have seen this board as low as $55, so you may want to shop around for it or wait for a sale.  Even at the current price of $65, I feel it is a good deal.

 

See the recommended Budget Box for more inspiration.  The Sempron 140 makes a great low power companion to this board.

 

If you care at all about speed, then you should avoid using PCI cards altogether.  PCIe is where its at.

 

 

I don't figure on getting a board to work with my 478 CPU, was more of a joke then anything. Right now I have to use the PCI card because that is all my mother board has.

 

For right now I need to handle 5 SATA drives with room to grow. I will look into these boards, thanks for the thoughts. I would like to stay away from the Gigabyte boards because I just don't want to worry about dealing with a HPA problem, I am sure they are probably fine but I want to keep it simple and easy.

I don't figure on getting a board to work with my 478 CPU, was more of a joke then anything. Right now I have to use the PCI card because that is all my mother board has.

 

For right now I need to handle 5 SATA drives with room to grow. I will look into these boards, thanks for the thoughts. I would like to stay away from the Gigabyte boards because I just don't want to worry about dealing with a HPA problem, I am sure they are probably fine but I want to keep it simple and easy.

 

As long as you know about the HPA problem you will be fine.  The board I picked up had the HPA "feature" turned off by default in the BIOS.  As fair as I know ALL new Gigabyte boards that are shipping have the option to disable this in there BIOS now.

 

The option in mine was labeled something like "Backup BIOS to HDD" and was set to NO by default.

If you only need support for 6-14 drives, then my favorite board du jour is the Biostar A760G M2+.  

 

Any idea how the BIOSTAR TA785G3HD would compare? NewEgg has a combo deal with the Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz

If you only need support for 6-14 drives, then my favorite board du jour is the Biostar A760G M2+.  

 

Any idea how the BIOSTAR TA785G3HD would compare? NewEgg has a combo deal with the Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz

 

That's a perfectly acceptable alternative, in fact I mentioned the combo deal in a 'Good Deals' thread:

Cheap unRAID build based on Newegg 72 hr sale - under $350, no MIR!

The primary difference between the two boards is that the A760G uses DDR2 RAM, whereas the TA785G uses DDR3 RAM.  DDR3 RAM is typically a bit more expensive, but not by much, so I say go for it.  The NICs are different too, but I haven't heard of any problems with any of the Realtek NICs, so I wouldn't worry about it.

 

In short, I expect the TA785G board to work just as well as the A760G, though I can personally vouch for the A760G since I and several others on these forums use it.  The TA785G also gives you more flexibility if in the future you ever want to convert it into an HTPC, since it has an HDMI port and much better onboard graphics.

I am putting together an order right now using the TA785G combo deal, and actually the DDR3 memory is exactly the same price and it 1066 instead of the DDR2 800. Looks like I will have $470 in it including a 1.5TB drive. I was going to reuse my old case and power supply but decided to go all new using the list and the budget build list, thanks for the link. Ended up being cheaper then getting the RB-1200 so that is good too.

Do I need to make any changes to BIOS setting to use this for UnRaid or just run it out of the box?

Do I need to make any changes to BIOS setting to use this for UnRaid or just run it out of the box?

Yes, at a minimum you will need to set the boot device to be the flash drive.

 

You will also need to disengage the turbo-encabulator. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April-fools...

Joe L.

Sounds good, I will make sure the Flux-Capacitor is activated also.......

 

This is going to be nice booting from USB, booting from a floppy now, man am I moving up in the world. Before you know it I will have a color TV too.

Sounds good, I will make sure the Flux-Capacitor is activated also.......

 

This is going to be nice booting from USB, booting from a floppy now, man am I moving up in the world. Before you know it I will have a color TV too.

If you get a TV new enough, it will come with a "Remote Control" to argue over with your family. 

You can also save a few dollars and get rid of that subscription to the TV Guide.

 

Seriously, depending on your BIOS and the specific memory strips you install, you might need to set the memory voltage, timing, and clock speed.  Most modern BIOS attempt to set it for you, some get it right, some do not.

I will look through the setting and check them all out.

 

I only have a single strip 2gig memory coming, hope that isn't a problem. I know some boards require that they memory be in pairs.

 

Nothing will be here until Monday so I got all weekend to move data around

 

Just looking at the Biostar site it does list this board as having an IDE port, can you confirm this? NewEgg doesn't list it. If that is the case I only need to get rid of one of the 3 IDE drive that I have, makes life easier for me, not as much data to move around.

Got everything put together and running last night no problem.

 

Ran a parity check right away to compare speed to the last system, these are all the same drives no change in data.

 

OLD HARDWARE: Time 15.75 hours - Speed 25,843 K/sec

NEW HARDWARE: Time 6.10 hours - Speed 66,764 K/sec

 

I am pretty happy with that!!

 

Transfer speed I am not sure, going from a 10/100 NIC to a Gigabit NIC. I should have taken more time testing the old stuff to get a feel for time. I copied one file from the server to my PC, took 50 sec on the old and 40 sec on the new. I was expecting a bigger increase then that but may be a used too small of file and it really didn't have time to get to full speed. My switch does show it as a Gig connection now where it showed a 10/100 with the old system.

 

Running a PreClear right now to add another drive tonight.

From 100mb to 1gb you should double or triple your throughput, assuming you have gb end to end and your disks are fast enough (8-10 to 15-30 MB/s).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Come to think of it I the file I copied was on one of the only older IDE drives that is left in the array, maybe that is the limiting factor. The rest are 1.5TB Seagates, I will be getting rid of the 2 IDE drives and adding another 1.5TB tonight. Now I wish I would have tried a file on one of the SATA drive before the switch, oh well.

Some users have seen even up to 40 mb/s writes to the server without a cache drive using Gigabit LAN.  I routinely see 50 - 60 mb/s writes so my server over Gigabit LAN, but I use a cache drive.

I am coping files from one drive to another right now and Windows says it it about 6 MB/Sec. I got about 4 with the old 10/100, but I don't know if the Windows numbers are acurate or if that is a good way to judge speed. When I get all the data moved around and the old drives gone I will look into this harder.

 

Another good thing is that I dropped about 30 watts with the new server!!

I usually just go by whatever numbers Windows tells me.  6 mb/s is pretty slow, but there could be a lot of factors that explain it.  A few examples, if you are using IDE drives, or if any of your computers does not have Gigabit LAN (client or server), if you are using Cat5 cables (instead of Cat5e or Cat6), or if you have a lot of other network traffic on your LAN, any of these (or a combination of these) could be causing your slow performance.  Once your server is setup and stable, we can start troubleshooting your performance issues.

Yea I will wait untill I get everything squared away. I am copy from IDE drives in the server to SATA drives in the server. I have all the data moved, just have to verify it all and they get rid of the 2 IDE drive and renumber the SATA drive and they run a parity check.